I have the utter privilege of running the Homeless Court Program. This program represents, in the words of Federal Judge Jeremy Fogel debating the cruelty of lethal injection as a humanitarian method of execution, "an evolution in the standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." People, finally, have slowly--every so painfully slowly--recognized that the social systems we have created do, in fact, fail to provide for a significant portion of our population an opportunity for the pursuit of life, property, education, and liberty. The Homeless Court program begins to remove some of the barriers to self-sufficiency facing homeless individuals. Simply put, homeless people cannot afford to pay the fines that are levied against them for...being homeless. Sounds outrageous? The case for this claim is opened and shut if we simply look to a single definition. It is a crime in Alameda County (and I'm sure a majority of counties throughout the United States) to commit "vagrancy," defined by dictionary.com as "wandering from place to place without a permanent home or a means of livelihood." In short, if you do not have a permanent home you are breaking the law.
If you can't pay the fine it doubles. If you can't pay the fine you are afraid to go to court and you receive another charge: "failure to appear." You can't pay that fine and it doubles. There are people who have racked up half a dozen charges of "failure to appear." Finally, after repeated failures to appear a bench warrant is issued for your arrest. Now we understand why in the song Mr. Windel, the artist comments, "his [a homeless person's] only worries are sickness and an occasional harassment by the police and their chase." I would only add that the sicknesses are plethoric in nature and the harassment more like persistent rather than occasional.
That being homeless itself is illegal should be enough to justify the existence of the Homeless Court but more can be--although should not need to be--said. If we can set aside our egos for just a split second and resist the temptation to tell ourselves "nobody becomes homeless without a reason. It's not my fault he's an addict, he's uneducated, and he can't get a job," then we begin to take an honest look at the causes. What the Homeless Court represents is a change in this attitude of apathy. The Homeless Court recognizes--and as advocates we encourage all of our fellow citizens to recognize--the problems with our community. The Court takes responsibility for the community--recognizing that helping the poorest members of it will help all members. This, I like to refer to as the "trickle up" effect.
Perhaps an example will help. This is an example of how concerned citizens of our Oakland community discovered the ability to and necessity of affecting positive change in order to benefit themselves. I have been involved with helping plan the next "Homeless Outreach Fair," a quarterly "one stop shop" effort whereby homeless individuals visit one location to receive, or at least gain knowledge about, the services already available in this community. There was one community group that was vitally responsible for getting the project launched. This community group is nothing more than a band of local, middle-to-upper class citizens concerned, in this case, about the cleanliness of the recently created Grand Lake Park. The park is on the north end of Lake Merritt--the natural centerpiece of Oakland. At Lake Merritt you can get firsthand experience of the beautiful diversity which resides in Oakland. With one walk around the lake you'll interact with the suburban middle aged jogger, the business men in suits on a lunch break, homeless people begging for change, elderly Asian immigrant women rummaging through garbage to recycle aluminum cans for a buck, the new age hippie en route to a yoga class, young lovers making out under the trees, Mormon evangelicals, and, if it happens to be a Sunday afternoon, the weekly war protesters.
In other words, Lake Merritt is a great equalizer. It attracts upper class citizens from the Oakland hills as well as panhandlers from downtown. It is the interaction of these two groups that our concerned citizens in question wanted to minimize. You see, the new Grand Lake Park was placed on the North end of the lake, a lovely crown to the Grand Lake Theatre area rife with unique shopping. To the surprise of the residents in the Hills, homeless people took to the park equally well. One retired entrepreneur, a self-proclaimed advocate of the self-interest model of capitalism (i.e., far from my so-called radical socialist viewpoint), decided to take on the project of cleaning up the park he worked so hard to create. It was precisely his entrepreneurial spirit--his willingness to look at all available options, and the motivation and resources to make possibilities become reality that enabled him to launch the Fair to help homeless people. You see, he wanted the homeless people out of his park but realized, short of locking all of them up or creating modern day gas chambers for them all, achieving his desired end required working toward real, practical solutions.
That people have considered and in fact implement the seemingly extreme solutions of permanent incarceration and mass execution is limited not only to Nazi Germany but, in fact, includes the City of Oakland, the State of California, and the United States of America itself. You see, permanent incarceration and mass execution are the de facto decisions we all make as a community when we elect to do nothing, for without help most of these people will end up permanently incarcerated and/or in an early grave anyway. This is not bleeding-heart liberal propaganda. That the people served by the Homeless Court would, without the Court’s help, most likely end up in one of these two scenarios comes simply from the statistical demographics of the people we serve at St. Vincent de Paul Champion Guidance Center, the same ones that we prepare for Homeless Court: probably 75% formerly incarcerated, 50% ex-felons, 30% veterans, and over 90% formerly involved in the illegal drug industry either as user, abuser, or seller. Without the Court’s help, based on cold statistics, the people served by it will, in fact, die at the hands not only of themselves but of the entire community who stood by and watched apathetically or, in the case of Capital Punishment, actualy agreed to have a hand in it themselves.
And so, in some way, I must congratulate the County of Alameda for taking responsibility. I congratulate the citizens of this community that have created, implemented, or at the very least elected the officials who have allowed, such a program to flourish here. Alameda County has, in a very small way and despite its own self-interested reasons, said "yes" to the question of community responsibility and admitted that maybe, just maybe, our social systems deserve a second look.
If you can't pay the fine it doubles. If you can't pay the fine you are afraid to go to court and you receive another charge: "failure to appear." You can't pay that fine and it doubles. There are people who have racked up half a dozen charges of "failure to appear." Finally, after repeated failures to appear a bench warrant is issued for your arrest. Now we understand why in the song Mr. Windel, the artist comments, "his [a homeless person's] only worries are sickness and an occasional harassment by the police and their chase." I would only add that the sicknesses are plethoric in nature and the harassment more like persistent rather than occasional.
That being homeless itself is illegal should be enough to justify the existence of the Homeless Court but more can be--although should not need to be--said. If we can set aside our egos for just a split second and resist the temptation to tell ourselves "nobody becomes homeless without a reason. It's not my fault he's an addict, he's uneducated, and he can't get a job," then we begin to take an honest look at the causes. What the Homeless Court represents is a change in this attitude of apathy. The Homeless Court recognizes--and as advocates we encourage all of our fellow citizens to recognize--the problems with our community. The Court takes responsibility for the community--recognizing that helping the poorest members of it will help all members. This, I like to refer to as the "trickle up" effect.
Perhaps an example will help. This is an example of how concerned citizens of our Oakland community discovered the ability to and necessity of affecting positive change in order to benefit themselves. I have been involved with helping plan the next "Homeless Outreach Fair," a quarterly "one stop shop" effort whereby homeless individuals visit one location to receive, or at least gain knowledge about, the services already available in this community. There was one community group that was vitally responsible for getting the project launched. This community group is nothing more than a band of local, middle-to-upper class citizens concerned, in this case, about the cleanliness of the recently created Grand Lake Park. The park is on the north end of Lake Merritt--the natural centerpiece of Oakland. At Lake Merritt you can get firsthand experience of the beautiful diversity which resides in Oakland. With one walk around the lake you'll interact with the suburban middle aged jogger, the business men in suits on a lunch break, homeless people begging for change, elderly Asian immigrant women rummaging through garbage to recycle aluminum cans for a buck, the new age hippie en route to a yoga class, young lovers making out under the trees, Mormon evangelicals, and, if it happens to be a Sunday afternoon, the weekly war protesters.
In other words, Lake Merritt is a great equalizer. It attracts upper class citizens from the Oakland hills as well as panhandlers from downtown. It is the interaction of these two groups that our concerned citizens in question wanted to minimize. You see, the new Grand Lake Park was placed on the North end of the lake, a lovely crown to the Grand Lake Theatre area rife with unique shopping. To the surprise of the residents in the Hills, homeless people took to the park equally well. One retired entrepreneur, a self-proclaimed advocate of the self-interest model of capitalism (i.e., far from my so-called radical socialist viewpoint), decided to take on the project of cleaning up the park he worked so hard to create. It was precisely his entrepreneurial spirit--his willingness to look at all available options, and the motivation and resources to make possibilities become reality that enabled him to launch the Fair to help homeless people. You see, he wanted the homeless people out of his park but realized, short of locking all of them up or creating modern day gas chambers for them all, achieving his desired end required working toward real, practical solutions.
That people have considered and in fact implement the seemingly extreme solutions of permanent incarceration and mass execution is limited not only to Nazi Germany but, in fact, includes the City of Oakland, the State of California, and the United States of America itself. You see, permanent incarceration and mass execution are the de facto decisions we all make as a community when we elect to do nothing, for without help most of these people will end up permanently incarcerated and/or in an early grave anyway. This is not bleeding-heart liberal propaganda. That the people served by the Homeless Court would, without the Court’s help, most likely end up in one of these two scenarios comes simply from the statistical demographics of the people we serve at St. Vincent de Paul Champion Guidance Center, the same ones that we prepare for Homeless Court: probably 75% formerly incarcerated, 50% ex-felons, 30% veterans, and over 90% formerly involved in the illegal drug industry either as user, abuser, or seller. Without the Court’s help, based on cold statistics, the people served by it will, in fact, die at the hands not only of themselves but of the entire community who stood by and watched apathetically or, in the case of Capital Punishment, actualy agreed to have a hand in it themselves.
And so, in some way, I must congratulate the County of Alameda for taking responsibility. I congratulate the citizens of this community that have created, implemented, or at the very least elected the officials who have allowed, such a program to flourish here. Alameda County has, in a very small way and despite its own self-interested reasons, said "yes" to the question of community responsibility and admitted that maybe, just maybe, our social systems deserve a second look.
posted by Ryan at 11:59 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home